A Tip for Your Halloween Costume

Here's your nightly math! Just 5 quick minutes of number fun for kids and parents at home. Read a cool fun fact, followed by math riddles at different levels so everyone can jump in. Your kids will love you for it.

A Tip for Your Halloween Costume

With Halloween coming soon, lots of kids are planning out their costumes. Have you thought about wearing more than one costume? You might if you could change from one into the other really fast — and as our fan John O. has shared with us, there’s a world record for that. The magicians in this wacky video broke the record for the most costume changes in 1 minute. Avery Chin holds a tall black cloth tube with Sylvia Lim standing inside it. Every time Avery lifts the tube and then pulls it back down, Sylvia has somehow switched into a whole new outfit! She changed into 18 new costumes, breaking the previous record of 16 costume changes. Can you figure out how they did it? We still can’t!

Wee ones: If you wear 6 different costumes for Halloween, what numbers do you say to count them?

Little kids: If you have 2 pairs of pants and 2 shirts, how many different outfits can you put together? Bonus: If Sylvia started in 1 costume and then changed into 18 more, how many total costumes does she wear in the video?

Big kids: If Sylvia had worn a red dress on every 4th change, how many of the 19 costumes at most could have been red dresses? Bonus: Avery and Sylvia spend the last 6 seconds of the minute taking bows. If they used the rest of that minute on 18 changes, how many seconds did Sylvia take for each if they all took equal time?

Answers:Wee ones: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Little kids: 4 outfits, since each pair of pants can go with each of the 2 shirts. Bonus: 19 costumes.

About the Author

Laura Bilodeau Overdeck is founder and president of Bedtime Math Foundation. Her goal is to make math as playful for kids as it was for her when she was a child. Her mom had Laura baking before she could walk, and her dad had her using power tools at a very unsafe age, measuring lengths, widths and angles in the process. Armed with this early love of numbers, Laura went on to get a BA in astrophysics from Princeton University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business; she continues to star-gaze today. Laura’s other interests include her three lively children, chocolate, extreme vehicles, and Lego Mindstorms.